Monday, January 15, 2007

A new website (hosted by wiki) has been created where information about philosophy journals is posted. The site can be found here.

To be honest, I am surprised to find so many interested in such a site. This is not because I think everyone knows all there is to know about journals, but because there is a publication that has far more information about philosophy journals and is far more informative: the directories published by the Philosophy Documentation Center. They publish a two volume everything anyone needs to know about departments, people, societies, publishers, and journals you'd ever want to know. These consist of an American directory (that includes Canada!) and international directory (for all countries other than the US and Canada). I cannot recommend these volumes warmly enough. Don't know where to submit an article? These volumes tell you where to send it, who accepts unsolicited manuscripts, how long to wait, acceptance rates (and acceptance with revisions), how many papers are published per year, etc etc etc. I owe the start of my career, in part, from being introduced to these volumes as a MA student by Dermot Moran.

Of course, these volumes have much information supplied by editors and publishers. As such, one may find they are a bit too generous and self-congratulatory with their self-reporting. In fariness, I've rarely recognized any problems on my own. My fear is that the wiki site will poorly reproduce the helpful information published by the PDC (and updated annually), consisting of various remarks by unsuccessful authors. If the wiki site is managed properly, it may limit the problems I suspect will plague the site. Meanwhile, I strongly recommend readers go out and purchase the two volume set from the PDC. It was one of the very first purchases I had Newcastle make when I came here. No research library can be without it. How's that for a sell......?

Thom Brooks

About Me

I'm Professor of Law and Government at Durham University appointed in the Law School and an Associate in the Philosophy Department. I'm originally from New Haven, Connecticut and studied in New Jersey, Arizona and Dublin before moving to the UK in 2001. I've been a visitor at Oxford, St Andrews and Uppsala and previously taught at Newcastle University. I'm founding editor of the Journal of Moral Philosophy which I started in 2003 while a graduate student.

My current research interests are immigration law and policy (esp citizenship) and sentencing law and policy (esp theories of punishment and the use of sentencing guidelines). I'm also working on the capabilities approach and global justice as well as my longstanding interests in the work of Hegel and the British Idealists.